Long Live Queer Nightlife - How the Closing of Gay Bars Sparked a Revolution with Amin Ghaziani

Long Live Queer Nightlife -  How the Closing of Gay Bars Sparked a Revolution

Amin Ghaziani in conversation with Dr Diarmuid Hester, author of (the brilliant) Nothing Ever Just Disappears: Seven Hidden Histories 

Event details: Join us at Gay's the Word bookshop on Thursday 14th March for this relaxed, fascinating and intimate event. Doors open 7pm

It’s closing time for an alarming number of gay bars in cities around the globe—but it’s definitely not the last dance…

In this exhilarating journey into underground parties, pulsating with life and limitless possibility, acclaimed author Amin Ghaziani unveils the unexpected revolution revitalizing urban nightlife.

Far from the gay bar with its largely white, gay male clientele, here is a dazzling scene of secret parties—club nights—wherein culture creatives, many of whom are queer, trans, and racial minorities, reclaim the night in the name of those too long left out. Episodic, nomadic, and radically inclusive, club nights are refashioning queer nightlife in boundlessly imaginative and powerfully defiant ways.

Drawing on Ghaziani’s immersive encounters at underground parties in London and more than one hundred riveting interviews with everyone from bar owners to party producers, revelers to rabble-rousers, Long Live Queer Nightlife showcases a spectacular, if seldom-seen, vision of a queer world shimmering with self-empowerment, inventiveness, and joy. 

“With fluency and care, Amin Ghaziani brings us the voices and spaces of queer nightlife in the city. This is a book that listens closely, sees clearly, and dances freely. Against a sociology of loss, Ghaziani offers a counsel of joy.”—Fran Tonkiss, London School of Economics and Political Science

Amin will be in the UK as part of an extensive European book tour around the publication of this book. Long Live Queer Nightlife, is centered exclusively on research on the queer nightlife scene of London. Published by Princeton University Press. £25. 

Praise:

“Are you worried about queer spaces closing? Me too. But guess what: they’ll never shut down all the queer pop-up nights. If you live to dress up and go out, but you also appreciate beautiful, thorough research, you’re going to love this book. Grab your leather choker and DM for the address—we’re going underground.”—Krista Burton, author of Moby Dyke: An Obsessive Quest to Track Down the Last Remaining Lesbian Bars in America

“Call your friends and get on the night bus! In Long Live Queer Nightlife, Amin Ghaziani takes us to London’s most exciting club nights—in places you least expect—to reveal how queer nightlife thrives even when capitalism crushes the gay bar. This is rigorous, thumping cultural analysis.”—madison moore, author of Fabulous: The Rise of the Beautiful Eccentric

“Long Live Queer Nightlife is a hopeful and hugely generous book. Ghaziani demonstrates an openness to the diverse places and people he encounters, and he approaches other scholars in the mode of conversation rather than point-scoring critique. The result is engrossing, accessible, and intellectually astute, and we come to understand afresh why queer clubbing and counterculture matter. As Ghaziani shows, fun is both life enhancing and deeply political.”—Matt Cook, University of Oxford

“The gay bar is dead; long live queer nightlife! This delightful and illuminating book takes us out on the town—London town. It shows us that, despite a dominant narrative of the death of gay nightclubs, queer nightlife is thriving while becoming more inclusive and joyful than ever. A must-read for anyone interested in urban life, culture, and community!”—Abigail C. Saguy, author of Come Out, Come Out, Whoever You Are

Watch Amin Ghaziani's book video here

Amin Ghaziani  is professor of sociology and Canada Research Chair in Urban Sexualities at the University of British Columbia.   He is the award-winning author of The Dividends of Dissent, Sex Cultures, and There Goes the Gayborhood (Princeton).   His work has been featured widely in international media outlets, including the New Yorker, the Financial Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, USA Today, and British Vogue.

Dr Diarmuid Hester  is a radical cultural historian, activist, and author of Wrong: A Critical Biography of Dennis Cooper  and Nothing Ever Just Disappears: Seven Hidden Histories  He is a BBC New Generation Thinker, and regularly contributes to BBC Radio 3, and he is the co-founder of Club Urania, Cambridge’s premier performance and music night for queer people and their friends. Diarmuid teaches at the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge, and is a research associate of Emmanuel College.